[2][3] Malay, in its various forms, is recognized as a national language in Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The most probable candidate for the urheimat of the Malayic languages is western Borneo prior to spread in Sumatra.

[5] The term "Malayic" was first coined by Dyen (1965) in his lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages.

[6] Based on grammatical evidence, Ross (2004) divides the Malayic languages into two primary branches:[7] This classification is mirrored in the Glottolog (Version 3.4).

There are two major proposals: Adelaar (2005) places Malayic within the Malayo-Sumbawan subgroup, which comprises the following languages:[12] Blust (2010) and Smith (2017) assign Malayic to the Greater North Borneo subgroup:[13][14] The Malayo-Sumbawan hypothesis is mainly based on phonological evidence with a few shared lexical innovations, while the Greater North Borneo hypothesis is based on a large corpus of lexical evidence.